The Inbound Growth Blog

The Inbound Growth Blog covers all topics relating to an integrated marketing strategy. We write about inbound marketing, social media, integrated marketing strategies and the sales process.

How to Use LinkedIn Company Pages to Drive ROI

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Posted by John Beveridge on Oct 8, 2012 1:35:00 PM

LinkedIn Social Media Marketing ProcessThis is the second in a two part series on using LinkedIn Company Pages to drive business results for your company.  Last week’s article focused on why LinkedIn is an essential network for B2B marketing and provided ideas on what types of content to share on LinkedIn to drive ROI. This article will focus on how to post to LinkedIn to maximize business results and share some ideas on how to test your efforts to fine-tune for ROI.

In our last blog article, we discussed how blog articles, event promotions, eBooks and questions are effective ways to drive engagement and business results when posting on LinkedIn.  Now we’ll turn our attention to how to post your content to optimize business results.

Create Landing Pages to Capture Leads

Before you share your eBooks, blog articles and event promotions on LinkedIn, you need to have landing pages set up on your website.  Landing pages are web pages that feature a description and an image of your content offer and form for visitors to fill out in order to receive the resource.  Landing pages are essential because they convert website visitors to leads.  Most website visitors aren’t ready to buy when they come to your web site.  By capturing contact information (usually an e-mail address), you create the opportunity to communicate with the lead as they progress through their buying decision.  Please read this article if you’d like to learn more about landing page best practices.

Let’s review the process by which you generate a lead from your LinkedIn Company Page:

LinkedIn Lead Conversion

The same process would take place in the event of a seminar/webinar invitation – your follower would be directed back to your website to register on your landing page.

You can also use your blog article posts to generate leads.  A fundamental best practice for blogging is to include a call-to-action in the blog (a call-to-action follows this paragraph.)  The lead generation process is similar to that described above, with the exception being that the reader goes from LinkedIn to the blog article and clicks on the call-to-action to get to the landing page.  It’s very important to understand that you will only generate leads if the content you’re sharing is relevant to the reader.

 How To Transform Your Business With Social Media

How to Post Content to Your LinkedIn Company Page

Post content regularly – you should set a goal of posting content at least once a day.  You should post more frequently if you have the content to support it.  According to Lana Khavinson, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LinkedIn, mornings and just before lunch are the best times to post content.  Keep in mind that you don’t always have to post brand-new content.  If your followers haven’t read one of your popular blog posts, sharing it on your LinkedIn Company Page is a good way to share it more broadly.  Keep in mind that posting relevant content that your followers want to read is the precursor for the lead generation process described earlier in this blog article.

Include links to product and service resources on your company page – if someone comes to your page and wants to learn more about what you do, make sure you have links to product and services information on your company page.  Many people will just want to read your content, but if they want to learn about what you do, make it easy for them.

LinkedIn Services

What Should You Test in Your LinkedIn Company Page Posting?

The question that should be the guiding principle behind your content posting is "Is the content I'm posting bringing value to my followers, customers and prospects?  Is it making their lives easier?"  Use the metrics provided by LinkedIn and that of your inbound marketing software to measure the results of your efforts.

Test Content Type

Which type of content works best for your audience?  Are you getting more clicks and impressions from blog posts? videos? eBooks?  Analyze your results and provide your audience with the types of content they prefer.  Mix up the types of content to provide the most value to your audience.  Keep in mind that images always increase clicks, so make sure you're including images when you share your blog posts, eBooks and event invitations.

Test Language

Which tone of voice works best for your business?  Do you want to be humorous?  thought-provoking?  helpful?  Test different tones of voice to see what resonates best with your audience while communicating the brand message you want to convery.  

You can also mix in posts that contain questions and facts to engage your audience and provide variety to your postings.  As with everything else, measure results to see what works best.

Test Timing and Frequency

As mentioned earlier, mornings and lunch times are generally the best times for posting your content.  However, you should test different times of day and different posting frequencies to find out what works best for your business.

How Can You Measure the Results of Your LinkedIn Campaign?

As with any inbound marketing or social media marketing process, it's important to review data to measure the success of your campaign.  So what metrics should you consider as you review your LinkedIn marketing process?

Reach and Follower Growth

Social media reach is the metric that measures the size of your ultimate audience.  It's not just your followers, but also includes your follower's connections who see your posts when they are "liked" by one of your followers.  Keeping track of your reach and the growth of your followers is a good way to understand if your content is relevant to your audience.  Set monthly goals for both and tactics to reach those goals.

Measure Post Engagement and Clicks

LinkedIn provides metrics for each post that you make, including engagement, clicks and likes. This data provides the basis for you to determine which types of content work best for you and when the best time is to post it. 

Evaluate Network Demographics

Is your content reaching the intended audience?  LinkedIn provides metrics on the demographics of your network.  This is useful information to determine how your posting should evolve over time to reach your intended audience.  LinkedIn provides industry, job function, company size, region and seniority data on your audience.

Demographics

Internet marketing software lets you move down the marketing funnel and measure how your LinkedIn campaign is driving website traffic, lead generation and sales.  Here's a screenshot from the HubSpot3 software showing website traffic generated by social media channels.

Socia Media Marketing Process Results

To summarize, LinkedIn is a powerful marketing tool, particularly for B2B companies.  If you follow the strategies and tactics described in these two articles, you will generate website traffic, leads and customers with your LinkedIn social media marketing process.  A focused approach that is constantly measured and improved is the key to your success.

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Topics: Social Media

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